Impressed thus with a belief in their kinship and of their ferocity, it was not surprising that live Gorillas could not be obtained by European travellers. Even a bold and skilful hunter of the elephant, when pressed to bring in one, declared he would not do it for a mountain of gold.
In 1847 the first sight of a part of a Gorilla was obtained by an American missionary; it was a skull, and its shape struck him as being so extraordinary that he believed the natives were correct in attributing it to the much-talked-of Ape of whose ferocity and strength he had heard so much. Collecting others, he at last handed them over to a fellow labourer, Dr. Savage, who possessed much anatomical knowledge. Every attempt was made to obtain even a dead Gorilla, but without satisfactory results. Savage lived for years in the neighbourhood of the Gaboon river, and not only gradually accumulated a fine collection of the bones of the great Ape, which he at first thought was the Orang-Utan, and which he subsequently described as the Gorilla, but also put together a history of its habits and aspect as gleaned from the natives. He was in the heart of Gorilla Land, which may be said to extend from ten to fifteen degrees of latitude on each side of the equator. It is bounded by the sea on the west, and extends to an unknown distance to the east, being watered by the Gaboon, Danger, and Fernandez Vas rivers. Mountainous far from the coast, and very undulating everywhere, it consists of dense forest, wild jungle, and open places. Traversed as this country is by navigable rivers which are visited by traders, it struck this observer that it was indeed remarkable that the Gorilla should have been so unknown to civilised men; but he was soon impressed with the dread the natives had of it, and also with the fact that it sought the remoter parts of the neighbouring woods. From the descriptions of the natives, who never attempted to interfere with the Gorilla except in self-defence, its height is above five feet, and it is disproportionately broad across the shoulders. It is covered with coarse black hair, which greatly resembles that of the Chimpanzee; with age it becomes grey, and this fact has given rise to the report that there are more kinds than one. Resembling a huge Ape in shape, with a great body, comparatively short legs with large hind-thumbs, its bulk is considerable, and its arms, reaching further down than in man, enable it to grasp and climb well. It does not possess a tail, and the head has a wide and long black face, a very deep cheek, great brows over the deeply-seated hazel eyes, a flat nose, and a wide mouth with very strong teeth. The top of the head has a crest of longish hair, and elsewhere it is exceedingly thick and short. The belly is very large. From inquiry he ascertained that when walking, their gait is shuffling, and the body, which is never upright like that of man, moves from side to side in going along. Usually it walks by resting the hands on the ground and then bringing the legs between them, and swinging the body forward. They live in bands, and the females generally exceed the males in number. They are exceedingly ferocious, never running away from man, and the few that have been captured were killed by elephant hunters and native traders as they came suddenly upon them whilst passing through the woods.
FRONT VIEW OF THE SKULL OF
THE GORILLA.
It was said, at this time, by the natives, that the Gorilla makes a sleeping-place like a hammock, by connecting the branches of a sheltered and thickly-leaved part of a tree by means of the long, tough, slender stems of parasitic plants, and lining it with the dried broad fronds of fern, or with long grass. This hammock-like abode may be seen at different heights, from ten to forty feet from the ground, but there is never more than one such nest in a tree. They avoid the abodes of man, but are most commonly seen in the months of September, October, and November, after the negroes have gathered in their outlying rice-crops, and have returned from the “bush” to their valleys. So observed, they are described to be usually in pairs, or if more, the addition consists of a few young ones of different ages and apparently of one family. The Gorilla is not gregarious. The parents may be seen sitting on a branch resting their backs against the tree trunk munching fruit, whilst the young Gorillas are at play, leaping and swinging from branch to branch with hoots or harsh cries of boisterous mirth. This rural felicity, however, has its objectionable sides, for occasionally, if not invariably, the old male, if he be seen in quest of food, is usually armed with a short stick, which the negroes aver to be the weapon with which he attacks his chief enemy the elephant. Not that the elephant directly or intentionally injures the Gorilla, but deriving its subsistence from the same source, the Ape regards the great proboscidian as a hostile intruder. When, therefore, he sees the elephant pulling down and wrenching off the branches of a favourite tree, the Gorilla, stealing along the bough, strikes the sensitive proboscis of the elephant with a violent blow of his club, and drives off the startled giant trumpeting shrilly with pain. In passing from one tree to another the Gorilla is said to walk semi-erect with the aid of his club, but with a waddling and awkward gait; when without a stick, he has been seen to walk as a man, with his hands clasped across the back of his head, instinctively balancing its forward position. If the Gorilla be surprised and approached, whatever the ground may be, he betakes himself on all-fours, dropping the stick, and makes his way very rapidly, with a kind of sidelong gallop, resting on the front knuckles, to the nearest tree. There he meets his pursuer, especially if his family is near and requiring his defence. No negro willingly approaches the tree in which the male Gorilla keeps guard, even with a gun. The experienced negro does not make the attack, but reserves his fire in self-defence. The enmity of the Gorilla to the whole negro race, male and female, is uniformly attested. Thus, when young men of the Gaboon tribe make excursions into the forests in quest of ivory, the enemy they most dread to meet is the Gorilla. If they have come unawares too near him with his family, he does not, like the lion, sulkily retreat, but comes rapidly to the attack, swinging down to the lower branches, and clutching at the nearest foe. The hideous aspect of the animal, with his green eyes flashing with rage, is heightened by the skin over the orbits and eyebrows being drawn rapidly backwards and forwards, with the hair erected, producing a horrible and fiendish scowl. If fired at, and not mortally hit, the Gorilla closes at once upon his assailant, and inflicts most dangerous if not deadly wounds, with his sharp and powerful tusks. The commander of a Bristol trader once saw a negro at the Gaboon frightfully mutilated from the bite of a Gorilla, from which he had recovered. Another negro exhibited to the same voyager a gun barrel bent and partly flattened by a wounded Gorilla in its death struggle.
The strength of the Gorilla is such as to make him a match for a lion, whose strength his own nearly rivals. Over the Leopard, invading the lower branches of his dwelling-place, he will gain an easier victory; and the huge canine teeth, with which only the male Gorilla is furnished, doubtless have been given to him for defending his mate and offspring.
As the appearance and some of the movements of the Gorilla are very man-like, some of the natives consider that the souls of men have entered into their bodies, and hence many apologies are made for some of their tricks and reported doings. Moreover, from this belief some of their skulls are made objects of fetish worship, and are marked with broad stripes of red paint, crossed by a white one. These were the stories told to Savage.
On returning to America, Savage investigated the parts of the skeletons he had obtained, and compared them with those of the Chimpanzee. Owen, in England, having received some corresponding specimens, continued the investigation, and all were agreed in deciding that the Gorilla was a species in itself, differing from the Chimpanzee, but sufficiently like it to be connected with it in a genus. The Gorilla was termed Troglodytes Gorilla, and the Chimpanzee, which will be noticed in the next chapter, kept its name of Troglodytes niger. The word Troglodytes was very ill chosen, and it does not refer in any way to the nature or habits of the animals. It was taken from τρωγλοδύται, the name of an Ethiopian tribe who dwell in holes or caves. The native name is Ngina.
The descriptions of the habits and anatomy of the Gorilla, fragmentary as they were, excited great interest in the minds of many travellers, and especially in that of Du Chaillu, who left America in 1855, determined to explore Gorilla Land, and to obtain some of the great Apes, dead or alive.
He first met with the Gorilla amongst some beautiful scenery, near the Sierra del Crystal, at the head waters of the Ntambounay, a stream which runs into the Muni or Danger River. Close to some rapids down which the torrent was rushing with great velocity amongst huge boulders, and sending its spray up to the tops of the highest trees of the banks, was a deserted village, and amongst its ruins were some broken-down sugar-canes. Here and there the canes had been taken down, and torn up by the roots, and they were lying about in fragments, which had evidently been chewed. He writes:—“I knew that there were fresh tracks of the Gorilla, and joy filled my heart; they (the native hunters) now looked at each other in silence, and muttered, Nguyla, which is as much as to say in Nepongwe, Ngina, or as we say, Gorilla. We followed these traces, and presently came to the footprints of the so-long desired animal. It was the first time I had ever seen these footprints, and my sensations were indescribable. Here was I now, it seemed, on the point of meeting face to face that monster of whose ferocity, strength, and cunning, the natives had told me so much; an animal scarce known to the civilised world, and which no white man before had hunted. My heart beat till I feared its loud pulsations would alarm the Gorilla, and my feelings were excited to a painful degree. By the tracks it was easy to know that there must have been several Gorillas in company. We prepared at once to follow them. The women were terrified, poor things, and we left them a good escort of two or three men to take care of them, and reassure them. Then the rest of us looked once more carefully at our guns, for the Gorilla gives you no time to re-load, and woe to him whom he attacks. We were armed to the teeth. My men were remarkably silent, as if they were going on an expedition of more than usual risk; for the male Gorilla is literally king of the African forest. He and the crested lion of Mount Atlas are the two fiercest and strongest beasts of the continent. The lion of South Africa cannot compare with either for strength or courage. I knew that we were about to pit ourselves against an animal which even the leopard of these mountains fears, and which perhaps has driven the lion out of his territory; for the king of beasts so numerous elsewhere in Africa is never met in the land of the Gorilla. We descended a hill, crossed a stream on a fallen log, and presently approached some huge boulders of granite. Alongside of one lay an immense dead tree, and about this we saw many evidences of the very recent presence of the Gorillas. Our approach was very cautious: we were divided into parties. We were to surround the granite block, behind which the animals were supposed to be hiding, and suddenly I was startled by a strange discordant, half-human, devilish cry, and beheld four young Gorillas running toward the deep forests. We fired, but hit nothing. Then we rushed on in pursuit, but they knew the woods better than we. Once I caught a glimpse of one of the animals again, but an intervening tree spoiled my mark, and I did not fire, but ran till we were exhausted, but in vain, and the alert beasts made their escape.” As the hunters sat round their fire in the evening, before going to sleep, the adventure of the day was talked over, and of course some very tough yarns and stories were told about the Gorillas, most of which ought to have put this traveller on his guard, and impressed him that the greater part of the ferocity and the lion-like courage of the new animal were derived from the imaginations of a very superstitious and not over-courageous race of men. They were great believers in witchcraft, and they believed that many men whose names they mentioned, and who are dead, had their spirits now dwelling in Gorillas. However, Du Chaillu, a few days afterwards, started on a hunt which had a more satisfactory termination than the last. He and the rest got on the track of an old male, and suddenly as they were creeping along in silence, which made a heavy breath seem loud and distinct, the woods were at once filled with the tremendous barking roar of the Gorilla. Then the underbush swayed rapidly just a-head, and presently before them stood an immense male. He had gone through the jungle on all-fours, but when he saw the party he raised himself and looked them boldly in the face. “It stood about a dozen yards from us, and was a sight I think I never shall forget. Nearly six feet high (he proved four inches shorter), with immense body, huge chest, and great muscular arms, with fiercely glaring large deep gray eyes, and a hellish expression of face, which seemed to me like some nightmare vision; there stood before us the king of the African forest. He was not afraid of us. He stood there and beat his breast with his huge fists till it resounded like an immense bass drum, which is their mode of offering defiance; sometimes giving vent to roar after roar. The roar of the Gorilla is the most singular and awful noise heard in these African woods. It begins with a sharp bark like an angry dog, then glides into a deep bass roll, which literally and closely resembles the roll of distant thunder along the sky, for which I have sometimes been tempted to take it when I did not see the animal. His eyes began to flash fiercely, for we stood motionless on the defensive, and the crest of short hair which stands on his forehead began to twitch rapidly up and down, while his powerful fangs were shown as he again sent forth a tremendous roar. He advanced a few steps, then stopped to utter that hideous roar again; advanced again, and finally stopped when at the distance of about six yards from us, and then, just as he began another of his roars, beating his breast with rage, we fired and killed him. With a groan which had something terribly human in it, and yet was full of brutishness, he fell forward on his face. The body shook convulsively for a few minutes, the limbs moved about in a struggling way, and then all was quiet; death had done its work, and I had leisure to examine the huge body. It proved to be five feet eight inches high, and the muscular development of the arms and breast showed the immense strength it had possessed.”